WORDS OF WISDOM WORDS OF WISDOM

from the school system. Even though things like that are public knowledge, we don’t always look at them closely. Now we know who we need to go to get the resources we need.”

No Need to Be Intimidated

Rosalind Moss, a Care and Safety Associate for A.V. Norrell, wants public school employees beyond Richmond to know that bargaining a contract is a lot more feasible than it may initially sound. “You can do it! It can be done!” she advises colleagues around the state. “It’s really about laying out what your concerns are and trying to come up with what the fix would be. The lawyers give you the ground rules, but you’re telling your story, and that’s what moves negotiations forward.”

Moss is quick to add, though, that bargaining isn’t all about appealing to the administration’s sense of empathy. Her team went into every negotiation session with research on similar job positions elsewhere in Virginia. “Once we went to the first meeting and talked about our concerns with salary,” she says, “we did research to show Richmond administrators the type of salary other security officers were

Salary topped the list for each REA bargaining group, which can make negotiations challenging in a state where school boards don’t have the authority to raise taxes. City councils and boards of supervisors allocate funds in Virginia. Despite this, REA was able to win improvements for every bargaining unit. Additionally, since negotiations were limited to two topics (salaries, and one other topic chosen by each bargaining unit), REA members couldn’t negotiate for everything they wanted. In the future, Moss says that CSAs hope to negotiate for additional training, for proper uniforms, and more. For Licensed Staff, Turner says key bargaining topics in the future will be revisiting “additional duties as assigned” and adding progressive discipline processes to the contract.

A Plus

for Students, Too

Lightly has worked for Richmond Public Schools for more than 35 years and is no stranger to standing up for herself, her colleagues—and her students—and learned how being a union member could help everyone early on.

She recalls noticing a student who never ate anything for lunch when she first started as a food service worker. When she asked the principal about it, he told her that the student wouldn’t talk and so she couldn’t order lunch. This didn’t sit right with Lightly, and

“Familiarize yourself with your current salaries and contracts. Be persistent, diligent, and patient. Sometimes it takes a while for the administration to understand what you’re going through. You need to organize and put all your issues on the table. Listen to veterans. Take advantage of your local union.”

Shan Lightly, School Nutrition Services

“Building a relationship with administration and school board is crucial. The stronger the relationship, the smoother the process.”

Darrell Turner, Preschool Teacher, REA Vice President

“Some people – employees and managers – might be afraid to bargain, but that’s actually just the fear of the unknown. It’s in your own head what you’re afraid of. Once you allow the other side to put their concerns on the table, you find out it’s not that bad. I think some people might feel like bargaining is going to open up a can of worms and in a way, it kind of is, but it’s better to address the issues rather than lose staff.”

Rosalind Moss, Care and Safety Associate

“First, make sure you’re a member of your union, and encourage co-workers to be part of it, too, because there’s strength in numbers. Second, don’t approach bargaining with a combative frame of mind, but be prepared. You have to do your research. We called around to get salaries for IAs in other cities. Make sure you know what’s out there [in terms of salaries and other contracts] and sit down with your team to come up with a strategic plan.”

Kacy Mosby, Instructional Assistant

she began giving the student lunch whether she ordered and paid or not.

“Every day I set that tray down in front of her,” she says. “How else was she going to get through the day and learn if she didn’t eat?”

When the principal found out, he told Lightly to stop it unless the student went through the line, ordered, and paid. Lightly disagreed, explained the situation to co-workers, learned of REA’s existence, and joined the union that week. The issue with the student became a grievance, and REA helped her resolve it so the student wouldn’t go hungry.

Since then, Lightly uses that experience to drive her to stick up for what she knows is right. It’s one of the reasons she decided to join the bargaining team. Her teammates had both been working in food service for several years, but they were relatively new to Richmond Public Schools.

“I’m one of the veterans,” she said. “That’s why I had to be a part of this. have four grandkids and my parents are both living, so I’m in the crunch, but I had to do this. I had to tell [the administration] the history [of what it’s been like working in school nutrition services for RPS].”

For example, Lightly said, it was important to let administration know that many food service workers have never had contracts. Some have over 30 years’ experience but without contracts, they didn’t have benefits. “A lot of employees have second jobs because the pay isn’t high enough,” she says. “We haven’t had habitual raises in a while. And yet, these workers continue to work for RPS because of the devotion they have to this job and the students they feed.”

Many, if not most, RPS workers have been willing to work for the schools despite lower-than-average pay because of how much they care about their students.

It’s a sentiment that came across again and again at school board meetings last year and has carried through in bargaining.

Contracts Life-Changing for Some

Thankfully, for some RPS employees, things are about to get better. Kacy Mosby is an instructional assistant at Maymont Preschool; she’s also a crossing guard and an after-care coordinator. An IA for some 11 years, she’s been at RPS for more than 21 years. “If you don’t use your voice, you get lost in the chorus,” she says, quoting her mom, who was a social worker and is still very politically active. Mosby’s husband is shop steward for his union at UPS. “It’s in our DNA to advocate for ourselves,” she says, adding, “I don’t think my husband has been as proud of me as he was when I told him we won what we did in the bargaining process.”

Here’s what she has to say about the new contract: “This will be life-changing for a lot of instructional assistants. don’t want to sound grandiose, but it will make it possible for some IAs to be able to provide for their families in a way that they never could before. For myself, it’s going to make a huge difference. I have a child in college, and I work two other positions to help put my child through school. I had to forgo going through college. This change in pay means that now my daughter and I can both go to school. I don’t have to work three positions. The raises in these contracts will give people options and choices and opportunity and that is monumental. It gives people the ability to go back to school, buy a reliable car, to be home with their kids in the evening. A lot of IAs are primary breadwinners in their families, so this is amazing.”

Mosby says that although administrators were aware of the low wages that IAs were being paid, the impacts of those salaries were still invisible to them because they did not have personal relationships with any IAs. All that changed when they sat down at the bargaining table. Mosby says that when she shared some of her co-workers’ stories, the administration began to understand what kind of impact financial hardship was having on their employees.

Most IAs work a second or even third job, and many can’t afford a car and don’t have the means to save up for a car payment, so some rely on Lyft and Uber to get to work, adding to their financial strain. “I knew of co-workers who were making really hard decisions with regards to food because they have kids and couldn’t afford to feed both themselves and their kids,” Mosby says. “I know people who were making difficult decisions around long term medications like insulin.” In fact, Mosby explains, some IAs are technically classified as homeless by RPS because they share living spaces with others. She hopes “other localities will look at what’s happening in Richmond and make sure that everyone is compensated for what they do.”

The Road Ahead

The new contracts don’t mean that union work is now over in Richmond. There is always more to do:

Other employee groups (such as bus drivers and custodians) not covered by these contracts are hoping to unionize within the next year. Turner says that the next steps include making sure City Council fully funds RPS so that the financial items of the contract can be implemented. REA also needs to train employees to enforce their contracts. That means ensuring employees have copies of the contract, that they know their rights, and that they have the knowledge and confidence to advocate for themselves.

“In order for this collective bargaining agreement to stay strong we need to make sure everyone abides by it,” he says, “or else it won’t have any teeth.”

There has been a history in RPS of employees feeling afraid to stick up for themselves, but if the last 18 months have proven anything, it’s that when employees work together and advocate for themselves and their co-workers, amazing things can happen. And in the case of REA, school division administration turned out to be more on their side than they’d ever realized. Breaking down the barriers to communication by implementing collective bargaining in Richmond has given educators a voice, brought employees and the administration together to solve issues in the schools, and created life-changing progress for many employees.

“There is power in numbers, and we are stronger than we think we are,” says Lightly. “If you keep quiet, it’s not going to happen.”l

Olivia Geho is a communication specialist in VEA’s Department of Communications and Public Affairs.